The technology disclosed in this specification relates generally to the identification and prevention of privacy leakage. The more common type of such privacy leakage may be referred to as “primary leakage”. Such primary leakage may involve a user's private information that is entered by the user on the Internet and then obtained and used by others without authority.
A more subtle type of privacy leakage may be referred to as “secondary leakage”. Secondary leakage may involve leakage of private information of a second party resulting from activities of a first party. The private information may be available on the electronic site of a third party. The information is available, via the third party, to a large or small group of parties, i.e., the information is “public”. The second party may not be aware of this disclosure or of the extent of the disclosure. For example, specific Internet services allow customers to provide email addresses of other Internet users so that these other users can be invited to an event. Such services host content, of interest to the event, which can be updated by the invited parties. However, the supplied addresses become known to the service without any prior approval necessarily obtained from these other Internet users, resulting in secondary leakage. Other examples of secondary leakage are provided below. This type of leakage may be accidental or intentional. However there is a need to identify such secondary leakage and to prevent it.